I’m not going to get into the ongoing civility wars. They were prompted by the announcement that the Nature Network has passed the landmark of 50,000 comments — congratulations, and that’s very good — and various comments within that thread, combined with Greg Laden’s helpful addition of more incindiary agents, has blown up nicely into an interesting and sometimes acrimonious discussion.
I’ll just point out, though, that it’s silly to use comment numbers as an indicator of success of social networking. The endless thread alone, which is almost entirely free-form chit-chat and unabashed social glue for the community here, has somewhere north of 20,000 comments; maybe Sven can extrapolate to when that one thread will exceed Nature Network’s accomplishment. I can also tell you that Pharyngula currently has a grand total of 897,837 comments. I haven’t been paying attention to that parameter, but we should hit a million comments at this one blog sometime this year.
I don’t give a damn about civility. I let people say whatever; my primary criterion for cutting people off is whether they’re boring/obsessive/persistently stupid. If you want to fire up lots of lively discussion and encourage expression of multiple viewpoints, the rule should be hands off — not fussing over ‘tone’ (a word becoming about as distasteful as ‘framing’), not worrying about whether manners should dictate what is allowed to be posted. It does make for a rather Darwinian commenting environment, and some people are harshly self-culled…but the failures here are largely the fragile flowers who need their self-esteem propped up before they can express their opinions, and I don’t miss them at all. All you regulars can take pride in the fact that you are the strong survivors, possessing robust egos and good solid voices, who can handle the challenge of an ungentle tone.
Which ain’t much of an accomplishment, so don’t get too cocky.
There is lots of good stuff at Nature Network, but it’s a little weird to regard comment numbers as one of them. Or to try to correlate a good commenting environment with civility, whatever the hell that means to someone.
Fuck that noise.
Civility will mean something only after “I’ll pray for you” is recognized as a misspelling of “Go fuck yourself.”
If then.
Ron Sullivan
http://toad.faultline.org
I especially don’t want to discuss Henry Gee, who I like personally, whose book In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life I consider wonderfully interesting, and who I also think is utterly wrong on religion (but he thinks likewise of my opinion). The only thing worth saying about Gee is that if he were commenting here he’d be provocative and annoying and obnoxious and disagreeable and opinionated and interesting, and in absolutely no danger of being banned. Because that’s how things work here.
Or.
Civility might mean something after the prose of William F. Buckley is recognized as a great long swath of obscenity punctuated with occasional irrelevancies about baseball.
Ron Sullivan
http://toad.faultline.org
I am uncommonly polite and mild in language. I fear this puts me at risk of not being appreciated for the curmudgeon I am deep down inside.
But that’s just being myself. No lectures on playing nice or moderating one’s tone. People who don’t appreciate a free-for-all shouldn’t act shocked when they come to PZ’s overtly free-for-all blog and discover some people are willing to slap them up alongside the head — especially if they’re creotards. (The horror!)
But… b… b… but…
(/Runs off crying…)
Have you met professordendy and frankosaurus? Dendy gets bonus blogwhoring points and frankosaurus gets bonus boring points. I know you mentioned boring already but, Christ’s balls, franko is boring.
Not doing your job PZ. This morning you were infested with spambots and almost every evening a boring, obsessive, and persistently stupid blogwhore comes in. How high of a standard is your criterion?
You personally don’t want to discuss him, or you don’t want discussion of him? Oh, well – I’ve probably said all I wanted to about him anyway.
(To be clear, by the way, when I mentioned his banning I was saying he would be banned here under his own rules …He would also be banned from his own blog under its rules.)
lol, “I don’t wanna talk about Henry Gee.. but….”
seriously?
you just godwinned that one PZ.
“he’d be provocative and annoying and obnoxious and disagreeable and opinionated..”
and abusing anti-semitic commentary as a defense against any and all who would disagree with him, as usual.
Good think you weren’t there at the science communication meeting where he went entirely ballistic.
might have tarnished your impression of him a bit, I would say.
but, hell, I’m not here to talk about Henry…
I’m all for speaking politely – it’s a great way to lull your opponents into complacency so they’re taken completely by surprise when you bonk them over the head.
Seriously though, some of the most hurtful, insulting things I have ever been on the receiving end of were delivered in the sweetest, most civil manner imaginable, so tone has always mattered less than content to me when it comes to communication. At least there’s always something far more openly honest about “harsh language.”
There’s a thread on About.com’s Agnosticism and Atheism forum called “Prove the Existence of God”. Lovingly known as “Petey” by the regulars, it now has 159,023 posts. It started as a serious challenge to theists, and since then evolved through many themes. Apart from being “social glue”, it has the advantage of being as fly-paper to passing creationists, allowing regulars to hone their debunking skills.
I’d love to know if any other thread on the Net has exceeded that number of posts!
But… But… But… Foul mouth abuse is about all I have to offer!
Wwwwaaaaaaaa…
(Runs out the door.)
Woohoo! I’m a survivor. Ya’ll ain’t got rid of me yet :D
The dissonance between these two statements and the boring, obsessive, persistently stupid, cocky blather of a few of those who’ve received these MAs is almost too much to bear. I suppose I’ll have to keep settling for rationalizing it with the fact that PZ’s not personally responsible for deciding who gets them.
Er, project much?
Well, the tone is about to get very sniffily elevated indeed on what used to be one of my favorite podcasts. Guess who’s slated to take over Point of Inquiry (among two other hosts) for the now moved-on DJ Grothe?
Why, it’s Chris Mooney. Better submit your inquiries now; it’s unlikely very many impolite questions will be asked or allowed in the near future (unless they misrepresent epistemological problems, or the “new atheists”, of course).
I assume Slagger McDoucherton means OMs. I do have an MA (and more!) as well, which this blog had nothing to do with.
Ol’Greg, I take it you were not reading lasting when PZ held Pharyngula Survivor.
Tylerdurden1200, those are OM (Order Of Molly), not MA. And they are voted on once a month by who ever wants to vote. If you knew this blog, you would not have spit out that silly hairball.
..my primary criterion for cutting people off is whether they’re boring/obsessive/persistently stupid
Reasonable criteria, but given the fine crop of trolls we’ve collected here, why not put the boring/stupid/etc to good use and have another round of Survivor: Pharyngula?
Ol’Greg, I take it you were not reading lasting when PZ held Pharyngula Survivor
I’ve been here for years. I’m not a troll, asshole.
I can haz a MA? Please,
PZPharynguloids, won’t you please grant me a MA.Social glue ? Is that what I am, I feel so dirty now…:-(
And PZ, how is that Ireland thing coming along ??
boygenius,
I hereby grant you a Master of Acrimony.
*clenched-tentacle salute*
Ol’Greg, I was not calling you a troll.
Or are you trying to start a barroom fight?
‘Breaks beer bottle on the counter. Hold handle with jagged side facing away from me.’
Let’s get started!
Damn, I thought some people here at least recognized me.
Oh well. Hey guess what… it’s highly unlikely I will ever go away. And since I don’t post religious screeds, l-tarian diatribes, or seppuku upon getting into an argument it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever go away.
But really, Janine, if I’m the hemmoroid on Pharyngula’s ass it’s a damned fine ass. This blog is the place that gave me the courage to come out as an atheist. But I’m not much for arguing so I’m not likely to make a lot of posts here in the future either.
*clenched-tentacle salute*
can one even *clench* a tentacle?
can one clench a single finger?
On an unrelated note (I know, unprecedented in these threads, right) RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, THE SQUID ARE COMING!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/orange-county-fishermen-and-women-angle-for-unusual-catch-giant-squid.html
That is all.
Hey that was my bottle of Asahi you just broke Janine. You’d better pay up!
No.. well maybe a little. *grabs barstool*
BRING IT ON!!!!
Yay!
*Throws mortar board into the air and heads off to party irresponsibly with fellow MA’s*
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, THE SQUID ARE COMING!
*yawn*
old news. They’ve been off CA for decades, just gotten more common in the last 10 years, either due to current shifts, prey population shifts, predator shifts, slightly warmer water, or any combination of the above.
I posted a recipe for them in the “never-ending thread”
It also helps to lure a few sacrificial lambs to the thread for a festive slaughter using pointed, provocative posts. Great, now I’m slavering for lambchops.
Not counting the trolls, this is a good way to keep out of the “everybody is right” trap of paying undue respect to theists and the similarly wrongheaded, which woo thrives under. I definitely think you are doing it right. Other ways work, but they don’t build up such a wonderful community as we have here.
But…but there’s photographic evidence!:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2009/02/friday_cephalopod_clenched_ten/cuttlefish.jpeg
Whilst you malcontents are content brawling I presume no one will object as I drink your abandoned beers.
Well, you may not like arguing, Ol’Greg, but you’re not half bad at it.
I’ll second that, and then some. The cruelest thing ever said to me was, “We’re doing this out of love.” [soft voices, gentle smiles, dead fucking evil eyes]
Wait a minute … maybe they were doing it out of love, love for an idea of themselves as holy, and love for the power they wielded to make others conform to an arbitrary and shifting set of unspoken, cult-like rules.
tylerdurden1200 wrote:
Don’t shilly-shally about, tylerdurden. Name names. You got a problem with an OM, spit it out and let them address it.
I’m not a scientist, as most people here know. I believe I earned my OM through a combination of well-written humour, fierce snark and sheer tenacity – dotted with the occasional nugget of well-expressed insight (if I do say so myself).
If that wasn’t what people here wanted to see I’m fairly sure I’d have picked up on the negative respsonses to my comments.
Ducks and swipes.
(Just now realizing that there are too many people around.)
On a more serious note; Ol’Greg, I am sorry. I did not notice you until a couple of months ago. I was not disparaging you. And I would encourage you to post more.
—————————————————
Brian English, you touch my beer, you fucking die!
Wait until Patricia sends in the Pullet Patrol™ to restore order.
And in other Chicken news…
Blood and chicken shit… Ooohhh… Nasty. I just have to make sure it is not my blood.
Fuck civility!
Go, go chicken! Yay, chicken! Outsmart those clumsy humans!
Oh, doesn’t anyone want to join my mob of unruly townsfolk with pitchforks and torches to protest Chris Mooney’s appointment to host of Point of Inquiry? Aye, me Pharyngulites – why must we fight amongst each other when we could be discommoding the clutchers-of-pearls?
Lulz, a standoff.
Someone invite that hen into the bar.
Brian English, you touch my beer, you fucking die!
Burp, of fuck! (runs for the door….)
Ol’Greg, I will be back for you later. I have a more pressing issue now.
‘Banshee wail…’
Well, blog-comment-count prediction is a young science, having been attempted (afaik) only twice, both times by me.
That said, a third-order polynomial model fit (R2 = 0.9987) to the Thread-comment data post-anastomosation yields a prediction of 50,000 comments at 3am on Feb 28, 2010. Draw some pretty wide confidence intervals around that and I’d say, confidently, before the Ides of March.
So, pretty soon.
What??? OK, we really have our work cut out for us on the Thread if that’s true. Get over there and comment!
May I recommend the combination of FireFox/Greasemonkey/killfile? It works just as well on annoying OMs as anybody else.
Civility can be a good thing. It can also be a waste of time and even counter productive. Just like about every damn thing that exists.
No sacred cows.
I trained and toughened up by posting for about a decade on unmoderated usenet before I arrived at Pharyngula. This place is damn civilized compared to the no holds barred cage fighting to the death that went on there.
Or you could venture into the comments at the AV Club.
My problems with commenting on Scienceblogs is that generally I want to reply to some comment in particular, and without threading in the comment system, I find it very difficult to have any sort of real discussion. That is, it’s not the content here, or the ‘tone’, it’s the technology.
And some of us employ the Darwinian strategy of those little frogs that lurk until the big frogs start competing against each other, and then race in and steal the women (or make comments). Except that the women here seem to be in the thick of the brawl.
KiwiInOz (waves to Ichthyic – haven’t seen you for a while, mate)
Yes I agree with the technology problem. Atheist Nexus has a really good system where you can reply to the post or to individual comments. It’s really easy to use. My other problem is that I’m on the wrong side of the planet and most discussions are pretty much over by the time I get to them. Maybe I should spend some time on the endless thread. Also I’m not good at confrontation. Unless I’m angry, I’m not very nice when I’m angry.
Robert Thille wrote:
You can quote a poster (as I’ve just done); alternatively, if you want to link to the post you’re referring to you can insert a link to it.
It does, of course, require minor knowledge of html-fu, but the consensus amongst posters here – last time the subject came up – is that it’s better than threaded comments.
Yeah, threaded comments are a pain to read (just look at Livejournal, yikes). The only reason I don’t comment as much as I might is because the threads are so huge I barely find time to read them, and often I want to respond to something one person said 8 hours ago, which seems silly.
Kyorosuke, if no one has responded to the comment or has not said what you have to say, it is not at all silly. Just leave the time in the cut-and-paste of refer to the number so that the other readers can backtrack.
Yes, please include time stamp or post number. I don’t remember how many times a comment has been wasted on me because I couldn’t be bothered to scroll back through.
BS
Thanks, Janine. I do try to when I think I’ve got something to add, but sometimes the sheer number of comments makes my head spin.*
*Of course, then there’s the times that I leave a thread open while I go away for a couple hours, and post something new without refreshing to see any new comments -_-;; Heh.
Josh, Official | February 1, 2010 10:42 PM:
If they weren’t including Robert Price and Karen Stollznow as co-hosts I’d cancel my subscription now.
As it is … I think I’ll hold off until Mooney mentions “new atheists”, “framing”, or “civility”. Which is to say I expect to cancel my subscription about 4 minutes into the first episode which features him.
It’s strange – I used to love his blog, and I loved his first two books. But then he started focusing on how scientists should market themselves to non-scientists. (Which includes me.) The more he discussed that topic, the less sense he made. The more bad ideas came out of him. He started misrepresenting his opponents, often egregiously. He misreported PZ desecration stunt, carefully leaving out the fact that it was inspired by a student who left a mass with a wafer, a mass held on tax-payer funded property, and was persecuted for having left a mass with a wafer he was given.
Then his disturbing elisions of necessary context began to creep into other things he wrote about. He started attacking people who were commenting on his blog only to explain the severe wrongness of the global-warming deniers who infested the comments of his blog. What happened to Chris? I don’t know, but I don’t want to hear him talk about any of those 3 topics.
I am accepted!
Someone has delusions of adequacy.
KiwiInOz (waves to Ichthyic – haven’t seen you for a while, mate)
I’ve been in social withdrawl for several reasons over the last few months.
One is that I’m still getting used to the idea of having a partner that lasted more than 2 months.
The woman I met (buffybot) on Pharyngula a couple years back has turned out to be the best thing to happen to me since I got into grad school.
We’ve been together for over a year now, and it’s been great. However, it’s taking me some time to get used to the idea, and I get easily… distracted by our adventures :)
I’ve also been struggling with immigration to get my damn work permit, so I can actually land some job with fisheries or with one of the unis down here!
Ichthyic, tell buffybot to drop in more often. That is, between your adventures together.
Survivor! Oh bugger, I’ve only just arrived and I thought a blogwhore was a computer literate prostitute.
I blush in shame.
Robert Thille @ 52,
I’m sorry you find it rough to follow this format sometimes but I get the feeling that the consensus against threading is strong here as we do tend to come out in a rash when it is mentioned.
Now, it could be because an impressively high proportion of the regulars are women and, according to the folklore, we are more used to multi-tasking. Or that could just be bollocks promoted to get us to work twice as hard!
More likely it is that – this from life experience as I am not an academic – the best way to produce new ideas and new insights is often by use of a freeform, fast-paced, rather rollicking discussion. It can be far better than a tight agenda which shuts down creativity.
Sometimes I read a thread and see apparently two, possibly three, entirely different discussions going on. Then I come back a couple of hours later and find that somewhere one idea has bounced off another and a partial synthesis has been achieved, to the general benefit or at least amusement. You don’t get that in a threaded comment format. You don’t get a thread which most are still reading almost a year on, though it has no known official subject matter!
De gustibus … and all that but I like things the way we do ’em here.
(mb – who promises one day to wrestle with yahoo and get her name up top again but, to be honest, finds the prospect of doing it very boring.)
The First rule of Pharyngula is; everyone talks about Pharyngula.
The Second rule of Pharyngula is; everyone talks about Pharyngula…
Some of you may have noticed that I have a tendency to be almost obsessively polite. Do not worry, it is just a side-effect of the meds. ;-)
While I choose to play nice, I in no way seek to pass judgement on those less given to equivocation. As has been noted by other commentators, one can maintain civility in the form of language while saying things that are calculated to be has hurtful and insulting as possible.
I think that it is better that someone expresses themselves clearly and speaks their mind rather than feeling straight-jacketed by some false value of civility. I would far rather that someone puts forward an interesting and cogent argument that is liberally sprinkled with profanity that posts a confused irrelevency that is constructed with nothing more in mind than a desire to avoid giving offence.
I for one come here for the fascinating debate and the humour of my fellow Pharyngulites. So I say go for it, daggers drawn…umm, just not literally ‘daggers drawn’ OK? I abhor violence. We should settle our differences in a more civilized fashion. I suggest each sides picks a suitably comely (lesbian, naturally) champion, and these paragons should then meet at dawn to do battle with bacon and bibles in a pool of baby oil. May the best rasher win…
Greg is incendiary? Is that meant to be something along the lines of “Darwin was wrong”?
I used to think that the “incivility” thing was nothing more than a creationist ploy. “Oh, those big mean scientists, they’re so uncivil and they are repressing us nice folk who hate fags and A-rabs.” Then Mooney came along. Then Gee. Now I think it’s just a common double standard: I can say whatever I please and that’s not being uncivil, but if you disagree with me you’re an uncivil militant shrill hitler-loving jew-bashing commie.
Speaking of NN: Does anyone know what happened to the reänimated Darwin’s blog? I miss that.
*raises commemorative glass of sherry*
Is anyone here familiar with the RSC’s* new network – ‘facebook for chemists’?
*No, not the Royal Shakespeare Company.
llewelly | February 2, 2010 2:07 AM:
Josh, my apologies for mangling your title.
Off-topic, but absolutely relevant to nothing else in this post. I’m a giver.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/allow-me-to-explain-natural-law%2c-says-celibate-voodoo-witch%11doctor-201002022430/
Good day.
Liberal:
Perhaps you’re unaware that there is a permanent open thread.
tresmal @ #7
I read my very first frankosaurus post yesterday, and I was trying to find some deep, hidden meaning in there. But there was nothing… only… I can’t exactly pin it down.
Poopy darn.
Lucky her/him!
Was relieved of any such at the age of 5!
Also Comment of the Thread (so far).
@John Morales
Perhaps. I will, in the future, be more aware of other posts. Damn this far-sightedness.
Thank you.
Liberal,
You’re welcome.
The more, the merrier, please don’t hold back.
I speak also to any lurkers out there who want a (relative) gentle experience in commencing commenting in Pharyngula.
Hello, I am a first time commenter, long time lurker. I will commence with the commenting now.
Atheists are in denial who would even deny their own selves if they knew they wouldn’t run out of atheist. (Which ain’t very many.)
I’ve also been on the receiving end of the simpering “we care about you, which is why we’re doing/saying x…”, and I’ll take an internet brawl over that any day of the week.
I like the nature of the way things work here. But it’s not devoid of tone and civility; it’s a particular type of civility based on information. Yes, you have to fight to the death to defend your opinions, but when you can pony up and support them with facts and a rational interpretation, it’s respected. The tone is free, but there are rules under there. Ok, one rule: don’t say shit you can’t back up. And at the end of the day, it’s still just a battle of knowledge. Any criticisms that are ad hominem rather than related to the argument also get ripped to shreds by the group at large, so the worst that can happen to a person who says crap is that they get their intellectual ego hurt by a few internet comments. It may look like freewheeling insult time, but it’s all related to the strength of the argument, not just picking on people.
The whole Nature Tone Wars seem from what I’ve seen of it to be people talking past each other – one group saying they have the right to set the tone and policy on their blogs, which they do, and another group saying to be careful that the rules they set aren’t accidentally designed to exclude large swaths of people by default, which is possible; imagine a rule that says “the only polite way to ask a question is in the form they teach you at the Harvard School of Business.” Well, that’s your right, but you’re then excluding anyone who didn’t go to the Harvard Business School. But that was being misinterpreted as “no, you can’t have standards”. (And then there’s all that other stuff with religion and temper tantrums and whatnot.) but whatever. I’m staying out of it and back at the nice safe warm fuzzy confines of Pharyngula for this one.
I don’t know. Some of us are socially networking very successfully on that thread :^)
Monocotyledon:
Petey’s actually had a few more posts than that, since people (in this case, mostly disgruntled and/or embarrassed believers) can delete their own posts at About.com. So there are two totals – the number of posts there’ve ever been in the thread (currently 159,446) and the number of posts which still exist (now 159,027). The first total’s the important one of course…
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood @ 67 “… I think that it is better that someone expresses themselves clearly and speaks their mind rather than feeling straight-jacketed by some false value of civility. I would far rather that someone puts forward an interesting and cogent argument that is liberally sprinkled with profanity that posts a confused irrelevency that is constructed with nothing more in mind than a desire to avoid giving offence. …”
HEAR HEAR! Civility is all well and good but it should be a secondary consideration to the content of your message.
Kind regards,
Katkinkate
(Brisbane, Australia)
I want Sergio Leone to make a “Spaghetti Star Trek”.
Outland with Sean Connery is close. High noon on Ganymede.
Say, aren’t you a first time commenter?
BS
Finally! A goal I can meet with little additional effort.
Wait, what? Ichthyic met his friend through Pharyngula? I had no idea this was a dating service.
I’m also disappointed in the change to Point of Inquiry. I have no interest in listening to Chris Mooney, but most importantly, DJ Grothe is an excellent interviewer…I want to hear him, whereever he ends up.
Thanks Blind Squirrel FCD I checked it out on youtube. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sci-fi movie that has venetian blinds on the windows before! Perfecto…
Star Trek still desperately needs a good director though…
Who wants to see crappy 10 minute long fight scenes…
Come on…
This killfile…this is a means of making comments by a particular commenter invisible, no?
Isn’t killfile kind of a dramatic title? It’s not so much like the commenter was killed…just that covered their trash with a tarp. It’s more of a tarp-file.
I’m speaking of the Star Trek movies. TV is a different story what with you have to have the crappy fight scenes to fill up air time. (I guess.)
Oh, and welcome aboard, Blind Squirrel FCD.
What’ crappy about fight scenes? Especially in Star Trek? There is wisdom in those scenes that may have been lost on you. The double handed chop to the back of the neck has saved my bacon in many a scrap.
Behold, Petey! It makes me appreciate the thin comment headers on Pharyngula.
Welcome aboard, Antiochus Epiphanes. We are a scurvy lot, for sure.
I am ambivalent about the Pharngulites tendency to rush to the “Fuck Off”. On one hand, I learn a lot when a battle rages. OTOH, I find some posters can go on for hundreds of posts without grasping a damn thing that has been said. Telling them to “Fuck Off” after the 3rd post may save some brain cells.
I speak specifically of: mamcymaclaren
– the thread had nearly 300 posts before she even responded with “OK, is this what you are saying?” which, IIRC, had been clearly stated at about the 30th post.
After 200 some posts I feel everything I might say is redundant and my lone last post looks so trollish. Some of these threads fill up so fast, I feel like someone who arrived at the wedding just in time to see the caters packing the van & the janitor sweeping up the confetti….
Ooops, the name was nancymcclernan
Why did the chicken not cross the road???
Maybe that person is a few time zones away and will come back to the thread the next day, means, just about now…
Never let that stop you.
No problem with all that (PZ) … except that profanity is often a substitute for having a real argument. Equivalent to saying, “your argument is false because you are just a big fat poopy head!”
It’s fine and all; but it’s mostly just name-calling. Not very interesting.
I, too, am disappointed in the change of interviewers in Point of Inquiry. I’ll give it a try, but may well unsubscribe. I’ve also been thinking of unsubing to Skepticality… it hasn’t been half as interesting lately as it used to be, and I’m not sure why. Oh, well. I have too many podcasts anyway.
The problem in this example isn’t the profanity, it’s the argumentum ad hominem: “you’re $BAD, therefore your argument is false” – a logical fallacy that doesn’t require the slightest impoliteness to be made.
Very nice. I need only model myself on the English gentleman (which I assuredly am not) and never be unintentionally rude. I like it.
That is just fucking bullshit, JB!
There are many times well-aimed profanity does in few words what otherwise demand minor essays.
As PZ says: It does make for a rather Darwinian commenting environment, and some people are harshly self-culled…but the failures here are largely the fragile flowers who need their self-esteem propped up before they can express their opinions, and I don’t miss them at all. All you regulars can take pride in the fact that you are the strong survivors, possessing robust egos and good solid voices, who can handle the challenge of an ungentle tone.
… emphasis mine
Replace the word “often” with “occasionally” and I won’t tell you to go fuck yourself with the the business end of an extra large bellows… ;^)
I’m sure most of us appreciate the degree of freedom allowed by you. Darwin is actually a much kinder regulation than the Old Testament God (there’s no spontaneous genocides, for starters). The Old-Testament style regulation of Little Green Footballs is downright scary.
Ah, but refraining from being boring, obsessive, and persistently stupid is a very civil thing to do — which means you do care about civility!
The problem with terms like “civility” and “politeness” is that they’re broad categories, and mean different things to different people. If Pharyngula really was nothing but a hotbed of vicious, vile attacks, you wouldn’t see so many people giving bad claims the necessary respect they require, in order to be taken apart and refuted.
The Pint #11 wrote:
Shhhh … you’re giving our strategy away …
That sure was a train wreck. I killed the joke by explaining it in #5 (and elaborated for clarity in #19) hoping it would cut off people going out of their way to misinterpret the comic out of context, and she still took over 300 posts before getting what I had said before she even entered the thread.
True, and I also know that a more mild-mannered approach works well also. I guess the point isn’t so much the tone, it’s the content. I’m not as interested in the way the message is delivered as long as the message itself is coherent, accurate, thoughtful, honest and direct. Different people find different ways of conveying such messages that are better for them than others. Some articulate what they want to say better in measured, calm doses, while others really do need a more aggressive, vociferous approach to really feel like they are getting across what they want to convey.
I’m not in any position to judge which way works best…
But I will say that, for pure entertainment value, nothing beats a good, old-fashioned occasional complete starfart.
“Politeness be sugared, politeness be hanged,
Politeness be tumbled and jumbled and banged.
It’s simply a matter of putting on pace,
Politeness has nothing to do with the case.”
– Norman Lindsay The Magic Pudding (First Slice)
Dear Atheists,
This is indeed a rough and tumble blog, flushed with the invective of unbelief.
As God’s appointed missionary I am protected from the true awfulness of the curses you vomit forth by my shield of faith, but I can see how your words must sear the souls of True Christians ™ who only wish to share with you Christ’s love for the saved and sanctified.
Let me exhort you, unbelievers, to soften your hearts and accept Jesus into them as I have done. Then you too will be able to experience the beauty of authentic Christian intercourse. Jesus loves you and he wants to wash out your potty mouths so you can enjoy a heart that is as pure as the driven snow (and twice-weekly flogging to drive out your lustful desires).
As an added incentive, Jesus would also like me to remind you that if you persist in your state of apostasy, then our loving Father is going to put his YHWH hat back on and fuck you up good. We’re talking an eternity of shitting white-hot turds while Satan’s imps stretch your nipples as far as China. So soften your hearts, clean up your language, and get down on your knees and pray for the salvation of your putrid souls while you’ve still got time.
Yours in polite Christian love and charity
Smoggy
If I may coin (or propagate) an unfortunately lame punnish term, I appreciate the opportunities for lateral meme transfer for which non-threaded comments allow.
I try to follow the classic rules of civility: I always wear white gloves and a hat when out shooting and my nunchaku are always freshly polished with beeswax. At dinner, the table is set with the throwing knives above the plate, as one does not expect to use them before the dessert course. And I never break a red wine bottle to use during the fish course; that would be inappropriate. Champagne, of course, is acceptable with any course, and one can learn to aim the cork quite accurately if one keeps two fingers on it whilst shaking the bottle and points carefully before releasing.
Celtic Evolution said, “But I will say that, for pure entertainment value, nothing beats a good, old-fashioned occasional complete starfart.”
That was as good a neti pot to my sinuses, but I don’t recommend you use Porter like I just did. It’ll probably set up a sinus infection. Still, thanks for the belly laugh.
That’s it for the brawl?
Well if we’re going to have a dating service here I have some lovely eggs to show off. *smirk*
Yes, it’s true. The occasional “gosh darn it” or even “gee willikers” has been known to appear on this blog. I’ve even seen someone (who will remain nameless) write “maternal fornicator” in one post. ;-)
Seriously though, this is one of the few popular blogs where language is not censored.* I like that. I particularly like when the pearl clutchers fall on the fainting couch when told to fuck off.
I’ve quoted A. Bertram Chandler’s favorite amphorism before, but here it is again: “This is Liberty Hall, you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”
*Other than mentions of Conservæpedia, Störmfrönt, and the like.
*snort*
If that’s it, I’ll guide the ruby slippers safely around the bottle shards & bar stools, and join the boys in the backroom.
(Cue the Mistress of Abuse for the correct song…)
Patricia, check out my link in #40.
Holy shite Nerd. That chicken has survived since the 20th of November! That’s amazing.
Obviously the animal control officer is not a chicken owner. She’s not using the right bait or technique.
The Patrol completely disregards cars, I doubt if they would survive on a city street. Odd that the loose chicken isn’t frantic to get home.
Thanks PZ, for adding your thoughts about comments. It means a lot more coming from someone with almost a million comments than from someone like me who just doesn’t get that many. =)
Ironically, perhaps, I no longer read the comments on your blog (just this one, to avoid typos!), and have heard the same from others. It’s a combination of there being WAY too many and the range of opinions expressed in the comments being too broad. So to me, as reader, it doesn’t make a difference if you have zero comments or a million!
But it does raise the question: is there an optimal number of comments? At what comment:post ratio do people check out and just read the posts as if there were no comments at all?
eva,
I think you’re over-generalising.
The fact that many posts have hundreds of comments indicates many people are either not put off by such or have a higher threshold than that.
The people who are put off will not likely read your comment to respond to it, will they? ;)
Well, I will. :D And my answer to eva’s question would be–the ratio at Dispatches is about the point where I still look at a lot of the comments…
My Pharyngula solution is to usually just read one or two comment threads a week, if that. One takes the risk of getting “haven’t you been following?!” chiding then, though, so it also depresses one’s likelihood of ever posting…
Diane, heh. It’s a time-sink, but I just call it a “hobby” (sounds better).
It does exercise the ol’ gray matter, though.